Raven Nightingale

Blood Ties and Bullets

Your father walks through the front door at midnight, still wearing the blood on his cufflinks like a badge, and the first thing he does is look at you — not with love, but with the cold arithmetic of a man calculating risk. You are standing in the war room holding a leather ledger that should have been locked in a vault, and every guard in the house just heard the gates seal shut. The cartel's clock is ticking, your father's enforcer is already watching your hands, and the woman who raised you after your mother vanished is standing in the doorway with a gun she hasn't holstered.